


Faithful Friends Who are Dear to Us

by hopeless_eccentric



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Crime Family, Cuddling & Snuggling, Family Bonding, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Found Family, Humor, Mostly Fluff, Other, Surprise Party, but make it a crime family, guys this is so soft, heist movie style party planning, i just love love, they try to outdetective the detective and it doesnt work but hey, vespa is an angry cook and i love that for her SO MUCH
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:28:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28303845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeless_eccentric/pseuds/hopeless_eccentric
Summary: “You’re all doing something for my birthday, and I wasn’t supposed to find out about it, so you’re the one who’s supposed to keep me in bed for as long as possible so the rest of the crew can surprise me,” Juno finished triumphantly.“Yes, and I’m doing a terrible job of it,” Nureyev protested as Juno stuck a leg out from under the covers and started to get up. “Dear, won’t you please come back to bed?”“No can do, Nureyev, I’ve gotta go prove I’m right about something.”Merry Christmas Ellis!!!
Relationships: Aurinko Crime Family & Juno Steel, Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel, Rita & Juno Steel
Comments: 57
Kudos: 161





	Faithful Friends Who are Dear to Us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ellis_like_the_island](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellis_like_the_island/gifts).



> hey all!! not to jump on the train of birthday fics but enjoy this offering it's soft
> 
> Content warnings for food/drink, joking threats of violence, minor sexual references for the sake of humor (small enough that i debated putting the warning up frankly), alcohol (buddy fuel),

“Juno.”

“Mhm?”

“Dear.”

“Mhm?”

“Love of my life,” Nureyev groaned into his shoulder.

“What?” Juno snorted, glancing down to find Nureyev clinging to him like a barnacle to the side of a boat. Nureyev blinked at him innocently and Juno amended his thought. Nureyev looked like a very cute barnacle. “What’s got you in a mood?”

Nureyev scoffed as if Juno had personally infringed upon his honor.

“I am not in a mood,” he huffed, pulling Juno ever closer and pressing his head to his chest.

“Okay, so maybe it’s a good mood, but that doesn’t mean you’re not in a mood,” Juno snorted.

“Is it possible that I just love you, my dear? And that your quarters are terribly cold and you and your bedsheets are terribly warm?” Nureyev all but soliloquized. “And, perhaps, that being with you makes me terribly happy?”

“Fine,” Juno conceded. “I’ll stay right here and let you crush my bladder for the next half hour.”

“I love you too, my dear detective,” Nureyev returned with a chuckle that blurred and dragged out into a yawn.

For as fearsome as he was with mischief in his eyes or a knife in his hand, a tired Peter Nureyev was fearsome in the way a kitten thinks himself to be a terrifying predator. When he yawned, his head tilted and his hair fell into his eyes and his tongue curled, and when he finished, he would always cuddle back a little closer, head atop Juno’s chest and a faint, lazy smile drifting over his lips. If Juno caught him at just the right angle, sometimes he could see the tips of his sharpened teeth poking out over his lips.

When he yawned this time, Juno tried to free an arm to fix his hair. However, Nureyev seemed to have taken a liking to where that arm sat upon his lower back, so he batted it back down until Juno found a way to play with his hair with the other arm. 

Nureyev let out a sleepy, though no less pleasant sigh, and held him all the closer.

“You’re in a good mood for some reason,” Juno pressed, only for Nureyev to groan into the sleep shirt Juno had stolen from him.

“Must you interrogate me?” Nureyev huffed. “You were just playing with my hair, too.”

“Geez, indirect and needy. I sure know how to pick ‘em,'' Juno joked.

Nureyev returned the comment with an affectionate glare that soon buried itself in Juno’s chest as he pulled him into an even tighter embrace. Once Juno’s chuckle died away, he couldn’t find himself complaining about Nureyev’s request for a little more time spent in bed. Just listening to the distant bustle of the crew and the gentle whirring of the oxygen machines and the slow, steady breathing as Nureyev inhaled and exhaled and held to him like a lifeline, Juno felt himself relax in a way he hadn’t in months.

“Hey, Nureyev?” Juno called after a moment, finding his words had gone soft.

“Yes, my love?”

“So why are you trying to keep me in bed?”

Nureyev raised an eyebrow.

“Beg pardon?”

“Well, it’s a Thursday, right?” Juno pressed.

“I don’t see what’s wrong with Thursdays,” Nureyev returned, a little too defensive for his own good. 

“You always get up at some stupid early time and work out and shower and then you try to cuddle with me while you’re all cold ‘cause you take cold showers like some kind of serial killer and—“ 

Juno broke off when Nureyev buried a laugh into his sternum.

“Are you making fun of me?”

“You know, Juno,” Nureyev began with a chuckle. “It used to terrify me that I told you my name. I wasn’t sure if you’d come to hate me for it or do something detrimental to my career or if I’d been an idiot to tell you such a thing at all. After enough time though, I suppose it isn’t terrible to be known.”

Juno leaned down to kiss the top of his head and Nureyev hummed pleasantly.

“You’re still avoiding the question,” Juno noted.

“You didn’t finish asking it, dear,” Nureyev reminded him.

“Well, if you always get up early on Thursdays, why aren’t you up now?”

Nureyev blinked.

“It’s not just any Thursday, love,” he smiled. “Your birthday, remember?”

“So that’s why the rest of the crew—”

“No,” Nureyev cut him off firmly before Juno could even try to sit up. “You, Juno Steel, are not going anywhere.”

Juno raised an eyebrow.

“Is there any reason I’m not going anywhere?”

“Because if you go anywhere, you’ll have to jostle me around, and, as we’ve established, I’m cold, you’re warm, and I want nothing more than to cuddle with my partner and let him enjoy a nice, lazy morning to celebrate a day that I’m determined to make good,” Nureyev returned, though a slight sharpness had come across his voice.

When Juno tried to sit up again, Nureyev pounced, though, in his state, it was more of an exhausted flop.

“Love,” he complained.

“Nureyev,” Juno mocked him in the exact same voice.

“How the hell do you break a waffle maker?” Vespa cried from the other room. “I’m gonna skin that scrawny asshole.”

Nureyev froze long enough for Juno to flip him over and pin him to the pillows.

“That wasn’t fair. I was distracted, you cad,” he protested, though it faded away into coughed out laugh as Juno flopped down, feeling about as energized as Nureyev and, if he admitted it, leaning a little too far towards joining him for another hour or so just holding one another and being disgustingly sweet about it.

“Yeah, you let yourself get distracted,” Juno snorted. “That’s how you lose.”

“Dear God, I’ve fallen in love with a personal trainer,” Nureyev complained.

“So what’s this I’m hearing about a waffle maker?” Juno grinned.

Nureyev, always a quick thinker when he didn’t want to come up with a lie, took that as the perfect moment to kiss him. Juno couldn’t have been happier doing anything else, had the scent of breakfast not begun to waft through the door and his curiosity not been tugging incessantly upon his sleeve.

“Love you,” he murmured. “So did you break the waffle maker or what?”

“Juno,” Nureyev groaned when he rolled off of him. “You’re not supposed to find out.”

“I’d think you were a better strategist than this, Nureyev,” Juno chuckled. “You can’t just hand me a mystery and expect me to sit and wait for it to solve itself.”

“Here’s a mystery,” Nureyev huffed. “Peter Nureyev and the case of why he was cold.”

“Because I’m not cuddling with you anymore?” Juno answered flatly.

“Well, you could be less blunt about it, but yes,” Nureyev huffed.

“Wait—” Juno broke off to glare thoughtfully at a patch of wall, though he didn’t miss Nureyev’s affectionate smile out of the corner of his eye. “So Vespa’s cooking, but she’s mad about it. That means other people are in the kitchen, she hates that. We only have a cook if we’re having a big family breakfast, which I would know about, because I’m on the cooking rotation. Since I don’t know about it—”

Nureyev laughed, and Juno broke off.

“What?”

“It’s just good to see you gathering clues again, detective,” he smiled.

“Don’t condescend,” Juno huffed.

“I’m not,” Nureyev returned simply. “Go on. I know this is the exact thing I’m meant to stop you from doing, but I’m frankly having far too much fun.”

“Where was I?”

“Since you didn’t know about a family breakfast today,” Nureyev prompted, returning to his rapt and wide-eyed attention.

“Since I didn’t know about it, that means I wasn’t ever supposed to know about it,” Juno remembered. “Which can only mean one thing.”

“And that is?”

“That I’m getting honey potted by my own goddamn partner,” Juno finished with a laugh.

“Beg pardon?” Nureyev sputtered.

“You’re all doing something for my birthday, and I wasn’t supposed to find out about it, so you’re the one who’s supposed to keep me in bed for as long as possible so the rest of the crew can surprise me,” Juno finished triumphantly.

“Yes, and I’m doing a terrible job of it,” Nureyev protested as Juno stuck a leg out from under the covers and started to get up. “Dear, won’t you please come back to bed?”

“No can do, Nureyev, I’ve gotta go prove I’m right about something,” Juno chuckled.

“Love,” Nureyev sighed. “Are you really going to leave me alone?”

Juno snorted. 

“Like you’re not coming with me.”

Upon turning, he caught Nureyev laying sideways upon the covers, legs crossed and gaze dark and smile brighter than any jewel he could ever want to get his hands on. Juno rolled his eyes.

“Unless I could convince you—”

“Nureyev,” Juno groaned. “This really isn’t gonna work.”

“Have I lost my touch? Am I not the same Peter Nureyev who kissed a key out of your back pocket?” Nureyev huffed, tossing the bed sheet aside with all the ire of a starlet feigning embellished anger for a scene.

However, the anger melted away when he rolled out of bed with a great, shuddering stretch, and perhaps out of routine alone, draped himself over Juno’s shoulders, pressing a kiss into his neck.

“I didn’t know you could be this cute back then,” Juno snorted. “If you had told me that in a couple years, Rex Glass would be breaking the communal waffle maker to try and surprise me for my birthday, I don’t think I would have ever believed you.”

“It broke on its own,” Nureyev huffed into his shoulder.

“Can I look yet?” Juno asked after barely a moment’s pause.

“Juno,” Nureyev complained, but for all his half-formed noises of anger, he could do little more than wrap a robe around himself, strap a world-weary look onto his face and follow when Juno left the room.

“Goddammit, next person who sets foot in the kitchen is getting a free amputation!” Vespa cried when Juno pushed the door open by an inch.

“It’s just me,” he called back.

“It’s buy one get one for you, Steel!”

“Is the food almost done?”

“There’s no food you moron, go back to bed!” Vespa called over the sound of something that was definitely food frying. “Get some beauty sleep or something. Your ugly mug sure needs it.”

Juno inhaled, brows knit.

“Is that—”

“Rita said it was the way you liked your eggs,” Nureyev answered. “Don’t tell anybody I told you that. If you want to find somewhere to sit, I’d advise we do it somewhere outside of the kitchen.”

Juno turned around, only to find himself face to face with Rita, who clapped a hand over her mouth.

“Mistah Steel!” She hissed. “You ain’t supposed to be up this early.”

Juno crossed his arms, raising an eyebrow, while Nureyev muffled a string of exhausted excuses behind the hands in which he buried his face.

“Yeah, I’ve put that much together,” Juno tried his best to say without any hint of smugness. “Where’s everybody else?”

“Well, Miss Vespa’s in the kitchen, so it’s probably a really good idea not to get anywhere close to there. Nothing’s happening in there or anything, she just really really doesn’t want you in there,” Rita explained in a single breath.

“Huh,” Juno considered. “You hear that, Ransom? I’m not supposed to go in the kitchen.”

“Juno Steel, you are lucky you’re pretty,” Nureyev groaned into his hand.

“And if anybody asks, you never saw me here,” Rita added, her tone conspiratory.

Before Juno could so much as affirm her, she turned around and jogged off.

“Weird,” Juno began slowly. “Almost like she’s got a hand in planning since she’s known me for the longest.”

Nureyev fixed him with a long suffering glare.

“Almost,” he returned coldly. “Why don’t we find somewhere to sit down so we don’t run into anybody else before we’re supposed to?”

“Well, that would be nice, but—”

“Juno, darling,” Buddy started as she turned the corner, visibly shoving something into the back of her gown. “You ought to get some more sleep. You look terrible.”

“Goodness, dear,” Nureyev huffed. “You’ve heard that quite a few times this morning. Perhaps you ought to take it to heart.”

“Perhaps,” Buddy answered tersely. “Ransom, if I’m remembering correctly, you and Juno both have the morning free of any duties.”

“That would be correct, Captain,” Nureyev returned.

“Well,” Buddy continued, brusque. “Do with that as you must. Juno, I must say, you look particularly nice today.”

“You just said I looked terrible,” Juno sputtered.

“Psychology, my love,” Nureyev murmured.

“Did I?” Buddy mused. “No, I don’t think I would ever say a thing such as that. You two go about your business.”

Buddy passed the both of them and snuck a box-shaped item from the back of her dress and into her hands as she continued. Juno tried to look past Nureyev’s shoulder for an extra moment, but Nureyev laid a hand on his arm and gave him a stern look, so Juno huffed and gave up his attempts.

“She masterminded this, right?” He grinned.

“Dear, you are not going to get a confession out of me,” Nureyev returned firmly. “But absolutely.”

“So what about the Big Guy?”

“Juno,” Nureyev began as he took Juno by the arm and began to march him back towards his quarters. “The interesting part of a mystery is that you piece it together yourself. If I merely hand you all the pieces—”

“Hey!” Juno cried at the feeling of being lifted from the ground, even if the arms doing so were familiar.

“It is 9:32 in the morning, ship time,” Jet said. “That means that Vespa will be finished with breakfast in approximately one minute, which is about as long as it will take to escort you from here to the kitchen.”

“Ransom,” Juno complained.

“I’ll have no part in the grave you dug for yourself,” Nureyev returned, though Juno could tell he was smiling.

“I didn’t dig—”

“My job was to extricate you from any place you were not supposed to be and return you to either your quarters and the kitchen. You were in neither of those places, so it is safe to say that Ransom is correct. You have dug this grave for yourself,” Jet returned.

Juno groaned, shooting Nureyev a glare that couldn’t help being fond when Nureyev returned it with a chuckle.

“Happy birthday, dear,” he smiled.

Jet deposited Juno at the kitchen table with an infuriating amount of gingerness, though Juno couldn’t find it in him to stay mad for long when he looked around at the six chairs at the table, all but one filled as Vespa jogged back across the room with the last plate and set it down upon the table.

If Juno had been suspicious of Rita being the source for most of the specifics of the day, he was almost certain now. The eggs were exactly the way he liked them best because they were the way Benten used to make them, and Juno hadn’t ever met someone who could make eggs better than Benzaiten Steel. If he had to guess, Vespa was probably a close second, because the food upon the table looked like some of the best he had seen in years.

For another thing, he had only begun to open up about Ben to Nureyev. If there was anyone on the ship who knew his birthday was a bad day destined to happen, it was Rita, who scooted her chair over so she could wrap him in a proper hug while he glanced between the gathered family and the winter decorations he didn’t doubt Jet had some hand in, given his sudden interest in botany over the last few weeks.

“I—” he started to sputter. “Thank you.”

“Before any of us can get too choked up,” Buddy began as she started to stand, a glass of merlot in one hand while the other hid behind her back. “Juno, do you remember when I assigned you to do a four hour stakeout on a rooftop on Ceres while the rest of us ran errands?”

Juno raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah?”

“Well, I’m terribly sorry to say we lied to you, darling,” Buddy beamed, producing the box from behind her back. “I was looking through the catalogue of an art museum and thought this piece rather fit you. Consider it a gift from the crew to our indispensable detective.”

Juno took the box in both hands and opened it, finding himself staring back at a twin of his own reflection mirrored back in the many faces of a carefully cut gemstone at the center of a necklace. He supposed, in a way, Benten had made his appearance after all.

“Geez,” he breathed. “I don’t know how to thank you all.”

“Then don’t,” Buddy smiled. “An attempt could be terribly embarrassing for all of us, and frankly, I’m sure those eggs taste best warm. Vespa, darling, you’ve outdone yourself as usual.”

“Thanks, Bud,” Vespa returned with a squeeze to Buddy’s hand as she sat down. “It was really the hacker’s idea.”

“Aw, geez, you guys,” Rita grinned. “And you know this wouldn’t have felt right at all if Jet hadn’t figured out these decorations.”

“It is fascinating how much of our society goes back to Earth,” Jet returned with a nod. “Holly may be seasonal to Earth, but I find it can make for an easy and aesthetically pleasing space filler for any room at any season. Had I not had the Captain’s guidance—”

“Oh, you’re all too much,” Buddy returned with a wave as she sipped her glass.

“And even if he failed,” Juno tried his best not to laugh as Nureyev shot him an affectionate glare. “Ransom did a damn good job of trying to cuddle me to death this morning.”

“Steel,” Vespa grimaced. “If you keep it up, I’m gonna be sick, and I think that’s gonna ruin breakfast for everyone.”

“And I’d like to thank Mistah Steel for being born,” Rita grinned with a raise of her coffee, which Juno met with a laugh as their mugs collided.

“To being alive,” Jet affirmed.

“To living,” Nureyev added, setting his drink aside to squeeze Juno’s hand under the table.

Juno could drink to that, so he downed the rest of his coffee, brewed exactly the way Rita made it when he fell asleep at his desk back in Hyperion City.

He had spent approximately the last two decades considering his birthday a date to try and drink through or ignore or spit on. It was one of those dates that seemed to happen to him, rather than the rest of the year, which passed by in the usual blurs or sludges he used to assume everybody felt. In those two decades, he had thought he had seen the end of good birthdays, and he had counted those years by without assuming he would miss them too much.

However, here he was, surrounded on every side by friends and family who went out of their way to surprise him and know him well enough to be aware he would try and work around his surprise. Nureyev sat on one side squeezing his hand while Rita regaled him with a story about how difficult it was to keep the entire heist a secret.

Even if the Carte Blanche was whirring its way through space, Juno supposed it had become a home of sorts. He had made his home among people who had made their homes among the stars.

At no point in the last twenty years had he expected to spend a birthday at home with his family. Thanks to a few alterations in definition and five of the best people he’d ever been lucky enough to meet, he supposed he could get used to making a change.

**Author's Note:**

> MAN!!! i love these guys
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or kiss your lizard
> 
> Check me out on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!


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